In 2008, at age 81, Matthiessen received the National Book Award for Fiction for Shadow Country, a one-volume, 890-page revision of his three novels set in frontier Florida that had been published in the 1990s.[3][4] According to critic Michael Dirda, "No one writes more lyrically [than Matthiessen] about animals or describes more movingly the spiritual experience of mountaintops, savannas, and the sea."[5]

Matthiessen was treated for acute leukemia for more than a year. His death came as he awaited publication of his final novel, In Paradise on April 8.[6]

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Matthiessen was born in New York City to Erard A. and Elizabeth (Carey) Matthiessen. Erard, an architect, joined the Navy during World War II and helped design gunnery training devices. Later, he gave up architecture to become a spokesman and fundraiser for the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy. The well-to-do family lived in both New York City and Connecticut where, along with his brother, Matthiessen developed a love of animals that influenced his future work as a wildlife writer and naturalist. He attended St. Bernard's School, the Hotchkiss School, and — after briefly serving in the U.S. Navy (1945–47) – Yale University (B.A., 1950), with his junior year spent at the Sorbonne. At Yale, he majored in English, published short stories (one of which won the prestigious Atlantic Prize), and studied zoology. Marrying and resolving to undertake a writer’s career, he soon moved back to Paris, where he associated with other expatriate American writers such as William Styron, James Baldwin and Irwin Shaw. There, in 1953, he became one of the founders, along with Harold L. Humes, Thomas Guinzburg, Donald Hall, and George Plimpton, of the literary magazineThe Paris Review. As revealed in a 2006 film, he was working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time, using the Review as his cover.[7] In a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, Matthiessen stated that he "invented The Paris Review as cover" for his CIA activities.[8] He completed his novel Partisans while employed by the CIA.[9] He returned to the U.S. in 1954, leaving Plimpton (a childhood friend) in charge of the Review. Matthiessen divorced in 1956 and began traveling extensively.

In 1959, Matthiessen published the first edition of Wildlife in America, a history of the extinction and endangerment of animal and bird species as a consequence of human settlement, throughout North American history, and of the human effort to protect endangered species.

In 2008, Matthiessen revisited his trilogy of Florida novels published during the 1990s: Killing Mr. Watson (1990), Lost Man's River (1997) and Bone by Bone (1999), inspired by the frontier years of South Florida and the death of planter Edgar J. Watson shortly after the Southwest Florida Hurricane of 1910. He revised and edited the three books, which had originated as one 1,500-page manuscript, which eventually yielded the award-winning single-volume Shadow Country.

While Matthiessen is celebrated for his mastery of both fiction and non-fiction, he has always considered himself first and foremost a writer of novels, saying, "Like anything that one makes well with one’s own hands, writing good nonfiction prose can be profoundly satisfying. Yet after a day of arranging my research, my set of facts, I feel stale and drained, whereas I am energized by fiction. Deep in a novel, one scarcely knows what may surface next, let alone where it comes from. In abandoning oneself to the free creation of something never beheld on earth, one feels almost delirious with a strange joy."[11]

Shortly after the 1983 publication of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen and his publisher Viking Penguin were sued for libel by David Price, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, and William J. Janklow, the former South Dakota governor. The plaintiffs sought over $49 million in damages; Janklow also sued to have all copies of the book withdrawn from bookstores.[12] After four years of litigation, Federal District Court Judge Diana E. Murphy dismissed Price's lawsuit, upholding Matthiessen's right "to publish an entirely one-sided view of people and events."[13] In the Janklow case, a South Dakota court also ruled for Matthiessen. Both cases were appealed. In 1990, the Supreme Court refused to hear Price's arguments, effectively ending his appeal. The South Dakota Supreme Court dismissed Janklow's case the same year.[14][15] With the lawsuits concluded, the paperback edition of the book was finally published in 1992.

After graduating from Yale in 1950, Matthiessen became engaged to Patsy Southgate, a Smith graduate whose father had been the chief of protocol in Roosevelt’s White House. Southgate was famously attractive and energetic. Matthiessen and Southgate had two children together. They divorced in 1956.

In 1963 he married the writer Deborah Love. In his book The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen reported having had a somewhat tempestuous on-again off-again relationship with his wife Deborah, culminating in a deep commitment to each other made shortly before she was diagnosed with cancer. Matthiessen and Deborah practiced Zen Buddhism.[16] She died in New York City near the end of 1972.

In September of the following year came the field trip to Himalayan Nepal. Matthiessen later became a Buddhist priest of the White Plum Asanga.[16] Before practicing Zen, Matthiessen was an early pioneer of LSD. He said his Buddhism evolved fairly naturally from his drug experiences.[17] He argued that it was unfortunate that LSD had become outlawed over time, given its potentially beneficial effects as a spiritual and therapeutic tool (when administered with the right care and attention) and was critical of a figure such as Timothy Leary in terms of the long-term reputation of the drug.[18]

In 1980, Matthiessen married Maria Eckhart, born in Tanzania, in a Zen ceremony on Long Island, New York. They lived in Sagaponack, New York. Eckhart is the mother of Serial host and Executive Producer Sarah Koenig, who was 10 or 11 years old at the time of the marriage.

^Dual awards for hardcover and paperback books were conferred from 1980 to 1983, when both Fiction and Nonfiction were also subdivided in other ways. Most of the roughly 30 award-winning paperbacks were reprints; The Snow Leopard alone won awards in both its first hardcover and its first paperback editions.

^Matthiessen, Peter (2008-05-27). "The Charlie Rose Show". 15:30–15:41 of interview. pp. 15:30–15:41 of interview. Retrieved 2008-09-14. I went there as a CIA agent, to Paris... I invented The Paris Review as cover.